“You lost your virginity to a princess?” I cry, a bit distraught, and he huffs a laugh as he looks at my face.
“Aye, I did.” He shrugs. “And I liked her, sure, and she me, but she haed done it before, and I was so fecking nervous. I just got steaming drunk, and we did it. And I d?nnae really remember. Flashes, just…”
I stare over at him, frowning.
“But it would be nice to remember the way the sky looked or how she felt when I held her or how the light was on her face or—” He looks up at me like I’ve caught him doing something embarrassing, and he flashes me a quick, apologetic smile. “I d?nnae feel bad about it. It happened. I did it to myself, but I d?nnae remember, and I wish I did. It’s important, ye ken? Yer first time, it’s important.”
I stare over at him in a new kind of awe. He’s terribly thoughtful and, perhaps in this specific moment, frustratingly considerate and sweet.
“Okay.” I nod a few times. “But to clarify, do you think I’m drunk right now?”
Jem lets out this barrel laugh; it’s big and deep and has the warmth of twelve thousand bonfires to it, his hands on his stomach as he properly laughs at the sky.
“No, I d?nnae think yer drunk.” He gives me a long-suffering look. “But, Daph, yer figuring yer shit out. Yer mind’s all over the place.” He breathes out his nose. “I just want it on me.”
“It is on you!” I protest, and my foot stomps in my heart.
“Now”—he shrugs like he’s already conceded to it—“for bye, when we do that, we’re no’ doing it because some wee footer forgot yer birthday.”
“Why will we do it?” I ask him very quietly.
Jem stares over at me a few seconds. “Because we cannae no’ anymore.”
Our eyes catch, and I swallow heavy. He moves in closer towards me so there’s just a few inches between our faces. The fire flickers beside us, and his eyes come alive next to it. All the sapphires in the world appear to be stockpiled in his eyes. But then I wonder if maybe he just himself is all the sapphires and all the diamonds and all the gold in the world. In all worlds, perhaps.
He gives me a half smile. “Good night, Bow.”
“Good night, Jem.”
* * *
* Oliver was his name.
? Which, I’ll remind you, is actually a nest.
? Also, can you please imagine with me how kicky a sleeper Peter Pan is? The most effervescent boy in the world.
* I’m not.
* Or if he does, he cares not.
* That I love increasingly more and more each passing day, even if I also sometimes hate it.
? Or something.
? Mostly for me.
§ A bit for him in the imaginary hope that we would bump into one another, but not in the actual reality of us really bumping into one another, where he then frowns at me.
* Even if it’s maybe actually all I want to see.
? A horrible, awful legend. Isn’t it?
* Very bravely, I might add.
* Which it is, but it’s not really what I meant.
* And I feel nervous and cross at once.
* Which I shan’t be.
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
He didn’t notice, by the way—Peter—that I was missing that night. Or if he did, he didn’t care. He didn’t say anything about it when I just showed up at the tree house at around lunchtime the next day.
He didn’t ask me where I’d been or what I’d been doing or even if I was okay. He just wrapped his arms around my waist, lifted me off the ground, and gave me a kiss that I didn’t understand.
There was a sort of roughness to it that I couldn’t tell you even now whether I cared for or not. A bit of me did, a bit of me didn’t…but if that isn’t just my entire relationship with Peter…
“You take your medicine this morning?”
“Hmm? Oh.” I look back at him, shake my head. “No.”
He goes inside to get me some, and I stay there, watching the younger boys.
Peter’s back after a minute, hands me the tonic in the flower like always. I don’t even mind the taste now. I think I used to not like to drink this, but now I can’t remember why.
My eyes fall onto Holden, the Lost Boy who arrived however many days ago he arrived—I can’t remember. He’s playing in the sun with the others. He looks so small.
I nod my head at him. “Has he been okay?”
Peter frowns. “Course he has. Why wouldn’t he be?”
“He might miss his parents.” I shrug. “That can happen when a child is lost.”
Peter shakes his head as though he knows of such things, though I suppose of all the boys present in one way or another, he is the lost-est. “He has us.”
I give him a tall look. “We are hardly parental figures.”
He stands up taller, slips both his arms around me. “I think we’re okay.”
“You disappear on adventures for days at a time.” And you’d best believe that I absolutely sidestep the fact that I just did that also. Peter’s not brought it up, so I won’t either. “You’re not very safety conscious.”
“A father’s job is to instill in his sons a drive to have fun and to never grow up.”
I press my finger into my top lip as I stare at the boys and say nothing.
Peter rests his chin on top of my head, and for a quick minute, I feel like we are together—properly together—and I feel a dash of guilt for how I spent the day prior to this one. I think it was the day before? Right? Wasn’t it? It could have been a week before. It feels cloudy all of a sudden, and then I see some love bites on the nape of Peter’s neck and some ink smudges on his chest, and I know without knowing how he spent my birthday. And maybe in light of Jamison by the fire, I’m not really entitled to feel sad, but I do.
“What are we doing today?” I turn in his arms to face him.
“We?” he repeats. “Nothing.” He grimaces a bit. “I’ve got boy stuff to do.”
I frown a bit. “What’s boy stuff?”
“Secret boy stuff.” He shrugs. “I’ll take you to the Indians on my way.”
“I don’t think they’re Indi—”
“Rye wants to see you,” he says over me before his eyes pinch. “Do you think he has romance inside him for you?”
I shake my head reflexively, even though sometimes I do wonder. “No.”
Peter doesn’t buy it. “It would make me angry if he did.”
“I know.” I nod, feeling tired all of a sudden.
He nods his head. “Let’s go.”
We fly, of course. Peter only ever flies, I think a bit because no one else can ever seem to do it very well if they aren’t with him, which he likes, and also (obviously) convenience.
He drops me off by the river. Calla’s lying on the edge of it, barely wearing anything. She props herself up when she sees him, gives him a wave. Peter just nods his chin at her and flies off.
The way it crushes her—he’s crushed me like that before too—I feel guilty that he’s doing it for me. Not guilty enough to ask him to stop but enough that what I asked of Jem yesterday burns hot in my mind like a fever, and I feel like a traitor somehow to both of them.
Rye and I go for a walk past Cannibal Cove, past Moon Crescent Cove, and then a bit into the rainforest.
There are submerged caves he thinks I’ll like, and I can tell even before we get there that he’s going to be right.
Rune flies in and joins us on the way.